The clear and distinct separation of good and evil ultimately serves
one purpose, is that to glamourize the “Good” . If we go back to the start of
the topic, the qualities that forms the bases for the genre that Cinderella
(the animation ) would be, put
Cinderella ( the character ) in the position of glamour , beauty and social
status in the view of the audienece. Aspects like the way she is animated (
real , elegant and lady-like ) , her personality and behavior ( gentle , kind ,
patient even in the face of hardship and cruelty ) and most prominently , her
appearance (aspects like the shimmering effects that is seen on her dress and
heels are literally makes her the ultimate physical description of being glamorous
). On the other hand, there is the political qualities of the story, that is
the battle between of good and evil, with the conclusion of Cinderella rising from
the horrible situation that she had suffered to achieve the dream - getting the
prince and live happily ever after. This then again put her in the position of the
center of attention and ultimately the subject of envy, whether it is in the
fictional world , or the real world. In
the story itself, her glamorous traits are what had captured the attention of
the Prince in the first place, and is what pushed him to pursue her. That in
turn created envy among her family members, who were then driven to do horrible
acts against her, and form themselves to be the new objects of envy ( the
sister try fitting the shoes on ).One could even say that this envy has existed
even before Cinderella’s appearance at the ball , when her kindness and beauty
caused jealousy within her step-family (the idea of having children that is
“less” than your husband’s ex-wife actually have been a potent origin for
envious behaviors that has demonstrated throughout history all over the world,
typically within the royalties and court where the children are in the position
of next in line to power or an heir ).
If we look back and take Berger’s quote into this context, the familiarities
are quite obvious: “Glamour can not exist without personal /social envy being a
wide-spread emotion..” so you see a single subject of envy ( that is Cinderella ) , being placed as
the center of ball and the prince attention causing mass interest and envy no
doubt. The envy are present more clearly within the step-family , where the 2
step sister compete and tried their hardest to fit the slipper linking back
that to Berger’s quote : “He lives in the contradiction between what he is and
whet he would like to be.” ,as the sister here doesn’t know what
they actually lack. They want to be the apple in the Prince’s eyes, the
princess that everyone will adored, yet they lack the proper grace, qualities,
and the physical attractiveness that one should have, yet they are fed by the
glamour which their step-mother had groomed into them , and the years that they
have spent bullying and looking down on their sister, which convinced them that
they are what they aren’t. Interestingly enough, even though Berger’s quote was
more or less a description for the modern working class, put into this context,
we see a representation of envy within a middle class environment
In real life
however, Cinderella is the object of envy but in a completely opposite way.
Cinderella is adored by her audience, who sees her as representation of a dream
life that they want to have. Her characters are the subject of moral conduct
for children, kind and benevolent, her stories, pushes the idea that if they
can be like that, good things will happen to them. Inspired by this , people
strive to be their own Cinderella , but we rarely see they’re condemned for
that ,although it is safe to acknowledge that the glamour of Cinderella can
hardly be replicate as it is accomplished by “magical” forces and therefore represent
only an idea of it , albeit a noble one ,just like Postrel (2013)explains:
“Glamour does not always connect to social envy … as many of the resentments
and hostilities of true envy are missing from glamour….glamour maybe an
illusion , but its rarely a mean or vicious one…we aspire to be like those we
find glamorous not to rob them of the attributes we admired” (Postrel V, 2013,
The power of Glamour, p.31-p.32). As we can see, the idea of the competing
forms of envy once again present itself as a counter to Berger’s point of view,
with Cinderella’s tale presenting both sides at once. A further counter would
be to applied Berger’s point of : “Either he then becomes fully conscious of the contradiction end its
causes, and so joins the political struggle for a full democracy which entails,
amongst other things, the overthrow of capitalism; or else he lives,
continually subject to an envy which, compounded with his sense of
powerlessness, dissolves into recurrent day-dreams” (1979, Way of seeing ) to
the context of the step-family . Forget that this is a semi-out-of-context for
the moment, by this definition, It is the step-family that should rise up and
join the struggle to overthrow the governing system ( that good can trumps
against evil, being beautiful is more desirable than ugly , the bad guys never
getting any magical help,…) and to
present them with more democratic abilities ( let’s say in this case, they are
not treated as the bad guys , or by their behavioural traits and physical
appearance in the sister’s case ) , which would be along the lines of notion supported by Gundle : “Glamour requires in order to
exist , some sense of equality and citizenship ( Gundle S, 2006 , The Glamour
system , n.p) ,which of course obviously would not work at all from a
moral standpoint, considering the fact they were the one that took the
democratic values away from Cinderella in the first place.
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